News & Articles

Public education used to be, you know, public – as in: An essential societal investment for the betterment of all, paid for by all through school taxes.
In addition to privatization schemes to turn education over to corporate profiteers, public schools themselves have steadily been perverting the idea of free education into one of “fee education.” This is a product of the budget slashing frenzy imposed on our schools in the past 15 years or so by Koch-headed, anti-public ideologues and unimaginative, acquiescent education officials.
Beset by budget cuts, too many school systems are accommodating the slashers by shifting the cost of educating America’s future from the general society to the parents of students who’re presently enrolled. Want to play a sport, take a class trip to a museum, or participate in a debate tournament? Pay a fee. Want art, music, drama, or other cultural courses? Pay a fee. Need a uniform? Pay a fee.
And now comes a new level of monetizing public education: The ubiquitous yellow school bus. Yes, just getting to and from school is increasingly being treated not as a necessary public service, but as a private “luxury” to be billed to the families of students. Districts in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, and elsewhere are charging around $400 a year per child. For the poor and the downwardly-mobile middle class that’s a real hit – yet another barrier to educational access for America’s majority. What’s next – a daily debit-card deduction for kids to enter a classroom?
If our society won’t even pay for bus rides, how’re we going to get to the future we want for our children? It’s time to reject the small-minded budget-slashers, reinvest fully in public education, and get America moving again.
“Schools start billing parents for bus rides,” Austin American Statesman, June 21, 2015.
“Pay to Ride: Many School Districts Now Charge Fees to Ride School Buses,” www.publicschoolreview.com, Undated.


Mighty Monsanto meets it’s match in musician

The Canadian rocker and master story teller, Neil Young, says: “Music is a universal language.” Yes, and when created by a people’s champion like him, music can bring down the high and mighty – just as Joshua’s trumpeters brought down the walls of Jericho.
Or, in Neil’s case, the walls of Monsanto. He has issued a powerful new album titled “The Monsanto Years,” taking on the arrogant gene manipulator and avaricious pesticide merchant for its relentless attempt to profiteer at the expense of family farmers, consumers, people’s democratic rights, and nature itself. On the title track, Young sings this verse: “The farmer knows he’s got to grow what he can sell, Monsanto, Monsanto/ So he signs a deal for GMOs that makes life hell with Monsanto, Monsanto/ Every year he buys the patented seeds/ Poison-ready, they’re what the corporation needs, Monsanto.”
Poor Monsanto – it says that Young’s lyrical truth has hurt its feelings. (Actually, Monsanto has no feelings, since it’s a corporation, a paper construct created solely for the purpose of maximizing the profits and minimizing the obligations of its big shareholders.) Nonetheless, the global giant whined in an official corporate statement that Young’s song ignores “what we do every day to help make agriculture more sustainable.”
But “sustainable” for whom? By its actions every day, Monsanto shows that the answer is: Sustainable for the corporate exploiter. As Young put it: “Corporations don’t have children. They don’t have feeling or soul. They don’t depend on uncontaminated water, clean air, or healthy food to survive. They are beholden to one thing – The bottom line. I choose to speak Truth to this Economic Power.”
In Neil Young’s music, mighty Monsanto has met a freewheeling cultural power it can’t intimidate, buy out, censor, or escape from.
“ Monsanto Fires Back at Neil Young’s Scathing New Album,” www.ecowatch.com, June 20, 2015

Hear the GOP presidential menagerie howl against equality

When the Supreme Court ruled that states can no longer ban same-sex marriages, it set off a cacophony of howling hyperbole by the GOP’s 14 presidential wannabes.
“I will not acquiesce to an imperial court,” blustered Mike Huckabee. “Resist and reject judicial tyranny,” he bellowed. Huck even couched his cry for continued discrimination against gay people by likening it to Abe Lincoln’s principled refusal to honor the Court’s 1857 ruling that African-Americans could not be citizens. Sure, Mike, you’re a modern-day Lincoln – except that he was opposing discrimination, while you’re demanding that government enforce it!
Then came the wild hair of the GOP’s presidential menagerie, Donnie Trump, blathering that the gay marriage decision is Jeb Bush’s fault. Really. The Donald explained that Jeb’s brother George had appointed Chief Justice John Roberts to the Court, so… there you have it. Shhhh – let’s not spoil Trump’s hallucination by telling him that Roberts actually voted against letting gays marry.
Now on to Scott Walker, who’s touted as the “serious” contender, yet, he’s seriously pushing a constitutional amendment to let government keep prohibiting same-sex marriages. “No one wants to live in a country where the government coerces people to act in opposition to their conscience,” said Scott, apparently oblivious to the fact that state governments have long been coercing LGBT people to do exactly that. And now Walker is promising, if elected, to coerce them right back into a life of unconscionable injustice.
Every one of the 14 Republican presidential candidates is marching backwards into the bigoted past, piously thumbing their noses not only at millions of gays and lesbians, but also at the ever-growing majority of Americans – especially young people – who support marriage equality.
“GOP White House hopefuls deride gay marriage ruling,” Austin American Statesman, June 28, 2015.
“G.O.P. Hopefuls Denounce Marriage Equality Ruling,” The New York Times, June 29, 2015.
“Marriage Equaltiy in America,” The New York Times, June 27, 2015.